


three times they didn't bang on her desk (and one time they did)

by quadrille



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, Desk Sex, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-01
Updated: 2015-11-01
Packaged: 2018-04-29 11:01:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5125061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quadrille/pseuds/quadrille
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An examination of how it might have gone. AU divergence, with a sorceress war that lasted much longer. More serious than the title implies, I swear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three times they didn't bang on her desk (and one time they did)

“Truth or dare?”  
  
“This is fucking ridiculous. Truth.”  
  
“So. Who’s the hottest instructor at the school?”  
  
“Trepe, of course.” The answer comes smoothly, easily, without a single hesitation, and it has nothing to do with how much alcohol he’s already downed at this shithole bar in Fisherman’s Horizon.  
  
“Shit, man, that came fast.” A smattering of laughter. “You got a crush or something? You didn’t have to think about that one at  _all._ ”  
  
“As if I had to?” Seifer’s eyebrow arches. “Half of ‘em are men. Of the women, she’s the one closest to our age. Practically a student. And hot as fuck. Of course I didn’t have to think about it.”  
  


❖

  
  
But he  _does_  think about it. It’s a nagging and persistent thought: not as clearly-formulated and defined as his romantic dream, of course, but it has something to do with her desk and her whip. Or some combination of the two. Every time she snipes at him in class, he can feel his grin automatically grow even broader: it’s a Pavlovian instinct by now, a shit-eating smirk that spreads like wildfire as soon as she turns to look at him, leading to another attempt to rile her up if he can. If there’s some imagined world in which he’s the gallant knight and she the primly-dressed princess, he knows it probably ends with a blow to the skull and a knee to the groin, their squabbling ringing across the ramparts.  
  
He’s okay with that.  
  


❖

  
  
He isn’t certain when he first became convinced that she wants to fuck him too. It’s probably the fifth time he has to stay late for detention, and keeps surreptitiously scraping his chair and table closer to her desk whenever she isn’t looking. Head bowed over a stack of paperwork, a wisp of blonde hair escaping from her severe bun. One hand removing her glasses, kneading the bridge of her nose.  
  
Seifer’s watching her more than he’s looking at his assignment, and Quistis can tell, of course. She can always tell.  
  
“Almasy, the purpose of detention is to do your  _work_ ,” she says, exasperated.  
  
“I am, I am,” he says amiably, placatingly, and fills in his name at the top of the paper for good measure. She looks incredulous, but eventually shakes her head and turns back to her work. She doesn’t tell him to move back.  
  
Meanwhile, he’s considering how close he is to graduation, and how sturdy that desk looks.  
  
  


❖

  
  
She’s shouting at him—somehow they always end up here, alone in the classroom, shouting at each other, his uniform rumpled and her hair disheveled, his heartbeat pounding in his throat—and each of the words find their mark, as always.  
  
“It’s the fact that you’re squandering your  _potential_ ,” she says. “You’re better than this, Seifer,” it’s one of the few times she’s called him by his first name, “and if you fail out of this academy it’s only you to blame. You cannot pin your own failures on anyone else. Not me, not Kramer, not  _Leonhart._ ”  
  
The name falls between them like a sword, quivering in the floor, shredding him open.  
  
“It’s you, and it’s always been you, shooting yourself in the foot. Stop whining about it like a Hyne-damned child.”  
  
Her cheeks are flushed, blooming red on the pale skin, and Seifer’s breathing is coming quickly as he snarls back, “I didn’t realise you cared so much, instructor.”  
  
“Well, I  _do_ ,” she shoots back—then looks suddenly startled at what she’s just said.  
  
That’s the second time. When their blue eyes meet and they both seem to realise, at once, how close they’re standing now. Face in each others’ face, his shoulders nearly vibrating from anger, her arms crossed over her chest. It would be so easy to kiss her now, he thinks: just step forward and close the rest of that distance, press her backwards against the desk.  
  
Maybe lock the door first.  
  
But the moment passes, as it always does: she heaves another ragged breath and takes a step back, and he takes one too, and it’s like two armies retreating on the battlefield. His hand finds the doorknob, turns it, and leaves, while his head is still throbbing and his pride still reeling.  
  


❖

  
  
Quistis is crying.  
  
It’s something he never thought he’d see. But the Second Sorceress War has been going on for a long damned time, and they just received another list of casualties from the front. She’s a full instructor, so she has to see it all tallied up in mathematical columns, students she’s taught for years rendered down to death statistics, impersonal numbers.  
  
Classes at Balamb haven’t happened for a long while, but Seifer is haunting her classroom and office still. He’s been itching to get his full certification, to be allowed to go out to the field again, to be entrusted with a squad; he’s been knuckling down as a result, training and training and sparring with the younger cadets, filing reports on the territory for the Garden administration. He’s trying his hardest.  
  
But he isn’t there yet, and Quistis is crying.  
  
“Are you—” he starts from the doorway, but then doesn’t know how to finish the sentence.  _Are you alright?_  There is no such thing as alright, and besides, he doesn’t expect her to talk to him, of all people, about it.  
  
The man is about to turn and leave, allowing her privacy, but then she holds up a hand.  
  
He isn’t actually thinking about it when he pulls up a chair and sits down beside her, his eyes instinctively trailing over the topmost report stacked on her desk. (The numbers are too high, strangling, impossible to process. Tilmitt’s demolitions squad fell last week. The memorial was a rushed and hasty thing, her name recited alongside the scores of other lost soldiers.)  
  
Instead, Seifer’s hand reaches out and catches hers, and Quistis curls up into his side, head resting against his shoulder, her puffy eyes closing. He doesn’t say anything. For once.  
  


❖

 

> Graduating class 20XX.  
>  –  **ALMASY, S**. Initial rank 10. SeeD ID: 918871122291.

  
It’s as if graduation has finally unlocked the potential stewing in the air between them, tipping the scales from ‘unacceptable’ into ‘acceptable’— _if I’d known this before, I might’ve studied harder the first time_ , he thinks with a laugh.  
  
They get drunk at a shithole bar in Fisherman’s Horizon, rebuilt after the end of the war. She ends up in his lap in the back of the room, hidden away in the shadows and burying themselves in a long, sloppy kiss that never seems to end—before Quistis seems to remember herself, and who she’s with, and comes up for air. She leaves him flustered at the bar, readjusting her clothes as she wobbles out of the building, mortified.  
  


❖

  
  
But the entire dynamic changes after that, of course. And then, one day, the night before he’s about to ship out for his fifth field mission—   
  


❖

  
  
He’s been waiting for it this long, and he still fucking forgets to lock the door.  
  
She doesn’t forget, of course: there’s one neat businesslike  _click_ , and then her heels marching across the room and her hand is knotting in his shirt, pulling him to her—he always thought he’d be the one to initiate, because shit-stirring is Seifer Almasy’s specialty—but this time it’s Quistis, all Quistis, her nails digging into his collar, teeth catching on his lip, and it’s almost all he can do just to keep up.  
  
“Instructor,” he breathes as he hefts her up onto the edge of her desk, “well, I never—”   
  
“ _Don’t_  call me that,” she says sharply.  
  
And his grin broadens like wildfire, as his hand hitches up her skirt and she fusses with the buckle of his belt, knees spreading and locking on either side of his hips, drawing him closer. A cupful of pens falls over, clattering and rolling off the desk, but they don’t give a damn by now.  _It’s a good thing he’s so tall_ , she thinks with a laugh.  
  
Somehow they always end up here, alone in the classroom, his uniform rumpled and her hair disheveled.


End file.
